Nuclear Regulatory Commission Reverses Course on Turkey Point

 

By John R. Byrne

Looking for some light reading on a Friday?  Check out the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's fifteen page order reversing its earlier decision allowing FPL to operate the nuclear reactors at Turkey Point until 2052 and 2053 respectively.  There's even a dissent!  In short, the Commission said that the Commission's staff didn't conduct a sufficient environmental analysis before extending the licenses.   The Herald covers the "unusual move" here.  The Commission said appeals from advocacy groups, including the Miami Waterkeeper, prompted its order.  So, at least for now, Turkey Point's "lease" expires in 2032/2033.

Caroline Heck Miller retires

 Jay Weaver has the details here:

A couple of years before The Washington Post exposed the Watergate scandal, University of Chicago intern Caroline Heck worked for a summer in the newspaper’s style section. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English, the aspiring journalist headed for Florida to start a job covering courts for the St. Petersburg Times.

“Every day was a theatrical production,” she recalled. But the legal stagecraft often fell short. “I found myself watching a trial, and I would watch the closing arguments and say to myself, ‘Sit down. I could do this better.’ ‘’

So Heck Miller left the newspaper business for Harvard Law School, then wound up at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami. Until retiring earlier this year, she worked for more than 40 years in a legal career highlighted by her role as the lead prosecutor in the Cuban Five spy case in 2001 — an internationally watched, politically charged throwback to the Cold War era

 Heck Miller came to be known as a trailblazer among prosecutors in the federal courthouse. She also was a “resident rabbi” offering sage advice on the law, ethics and trials to young prosecutors, and a polished writer who did all of her own pleadings and appeals. “She was a role model for everybody” in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said retired Magistrate Judge William Turnoff, who in the 1980s was chief of the major crimes section while Heck Miller served as his deputy. “She and Pat Sullivan tried more huge, important federal cases than probably anyone in the history of the Department of Justice,” comparing her to a retired colleague known for taking on Miami’s most infamous criminals.

In other news, the feds tried to subpoena a sitting state judge to testify.  Judge Gayles said nope:

But after first expressing a “willingness” to testify, Pooler consulted with the Florida Attorney General Office, which advised her not to be a witness in the federal case, saying in a motion to quash the subpoena that she “no longer agrees to testify as to any aspect of this matter.” On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles granted the motion to quash the subpoena, saying Pooler was “excused from the subpoena” and that prosecutors can call other witnesses in her place. Afterwards, they decided to call the former assistant state attorney, Robert Guinn, who handled Hollie’s plea colloquy before Pooler in 2014. But Hollie’s assistant federal public defender objected to Guinn as a substitute witness, according to court papers. Gayles must still decide on whether to let Guinn testify. Prosecutors also tried to persuade Gayles to admit a letter that Hollie had written to the clerk of the Miami-Dade Circuit Court after he violated his five-year probation when he was arrested on the two false-statement gun-buying charges in 2019. Hollie asked the clerk to send him the special conditions of his probationary release for his “cases that I got a conviction four.” [sic] Gayles also rejected that request.

Daubert and Marshmallows

By Michael Caruso

As federal—and now Florida state—practitioners know, courts use the Daubert standard to assess whether an expert witness's scientific testimony is based on valid reasoning that a jury can properly apply to the facts at issue. Under Daubert, courts are to consider the "validity" or "reliability" of the evidence in question, its degree of "fit" with the facts and issues in the case, and the risks or dangers that the evidence will confuse the issues or mislead the jury.

 

In assessing reliability, the prevalence and significance of peer review can affect a court's decision when determining whether the scientific community has generally accepted an opinion. The weight given to peer-reviewed opinions, however, is not a bright-line rule. Depending upon the evidentiary standard and the offered expert opinion, the importance of peer review varies when assessing admissibility. Over the years, many "settled" scientific theories have been discredited by belated peer review —fiber analysis, hair analysis, ballistics, bite marks, and tool marks. 

 

Last week, another settled theory—"The Marshmallow Test"—took a hit. The marshmallow test is an experimental design that measures a child's ability to delay gratification. For this test, the researcher gives a child the option of waiting a bit to get their favorite treat or, if not waiting for it, receiving a less-desired treat. The minutes or seconds a child waits measures their ability to delay gratification. According to the study, the kids who couldn't hold out long generally grew through their teens, 20s, and 30s quicker to frustrate, weaker in academic and social skills, and with more drug use, mental health, and weight issues.

 

But the latest follow-up study casts doubt that a preschooler's response to a marshmallow test can predict anything at all about her future. Following the subject children into their 40s, the new study finds that kids who quickly gave in to the marshmallow temptation are generally no more or less financially secure, educated, or physically healthy than their more patient peers. The amount of time the child waited to eat the treat failed to forecast roughly a dozen adult outcomes the researchers tested, including net worth, social standing, high interest-rate debt, diet and exercise habits, smoking, procrastination tendencies, and preventative dental care, according to the study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.

As Daubert acknowledges, peer review has its limitations: "in some instances well-grounbded ut innovative theories will not have been published . . . Some propositions, moreover are too particular, too new, or of too limited interest to be published." But, as we see here with marshmallows (and with fiber analysis, hair analysis, ballistics, bite marks, and tool marks), continued research and testing may be enlightening.

Should a criminal defense lawyer be sanctioned for altering a lineup during a state deposition?

 According to the Florida Supreme Court, the answer is yes, for 3 years! Three years even though the lawyer was simply trying to test the witness’ ability to pick out the witness. The court explained that the lawyer’s subjective intent was irrelevant. Rumpole covers it here. And here is the order. 

I can’t help to wonder what would have happened to a prosecutor who puts up false testimony at a hearing or trial. 

Judge Ruiz holds Covid-19 Pandemic "Immunity Statute" Unconstitutional

By John R. Byrne

If you practice civil law in this district, you're probably aware of the wave of Covid 19-related litigation out there, with parties using the pandemic as both a sword and a shield.  One active area has been lawsuits against universities.  So active that the Florida legislature passed--and Governor DeSantis signed--the Florida Immunity Statute for Educational Institutions for Actions Related to the Covid-19 Pandemic.  The statute does what it sounds like it does, giving universities a legal pass for doing things like shifting in-person instruction online during the pandemic.  

But Judge Ruiz dealt a likely fatal blow to the statute yesterday.  In Ferretti v. Nova Southeastern University, Inc., Case No. 20-61431-CV-RAR, he held that the statute was unconstitutional.  Citing Supreme Court precedent, he noted that a cause of action is effectively a piece of property. By retroactively abolishing an accrued cause of action, the reasoning goes, the statute violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  The order is an interesting (and quick) read.